The present disclosure relates, in general, to a feather duster, and a dusting method, and, more particularly, to a duster that provides improved dust removal from a surface to be dusted.
Feather dusters are well known and used primarily to remove dust from a surface. A typical feather duster has a plurality of feathers secured to, and extending from an elongated handle. Each feather has flue, consisting of a multitude of barbs and barbules extending from a quill. The feathers, and, more specifically the quills, have a slight natural bend, or curvature, and the quills are usually arranged so that their natural curvatures result in their distal end portions extending radially outwardly and being angularly spaced for 360 degrees, so that the cross section of the duster at the distal ends of the feathers forms a complete circle.
However, these type of arrangements suffer from two major problems. More particularly, the surface to be dusted is contacted, for the most part, by only the end portion of each feather. Therefore, the remaining portion of each of the feathers is not utilized. Also, during the dusting of a horizontal surface, the quills of the feathers tend to compress, creating a spring load effect so that, at the end of the dusting stroke, the quills spring back their normal position and flip the dust up in the air which returns to the surface being dusted, thus rendering the operation very inefficient. Further, if a side of the duster is used so that the feathers on the latter side engage the surface along their lengths, only a few of the feathers are utilized since a good portion of the remaining feathers are located diametrically opposite the feathers that are used.
Accordingly, what is needed is a feather duster that permits a relative large number of feathers to be used while engaging the surface to be dusted along their lengths. Also needed is a feather duster that insures that the dust from the surface is directed down away from the surface so that it will not return to the surface.